


baby (i'm yours)

by pentaghastly



Category: Archie Comics & Related Fandoms, Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greasers, F/F, and now that choni is rising it's ON bitches, i've had this in mind since the drag race episode, it's the 1950s and nobody is homophobic and girls can kiss Because I Said So, prep!cheryl and greaser!toni was Meant To Be, this is just really fluffy sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 17:41:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13908999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentaghastly/pseuds/pentaghastly
Summary: Here’s the thing: Toni’s seen first hand the kind of damage that a pretty girl and her smooth, creamy legs can do.Girls like Cheryl, she thinks - they can do damage.Girls like Cheryl. There’s an inherent wrongness to the thought that Toni senses almost immediately. Girls like Cheryl don’t exist. There’s justCheryl, and Toni’s pretty sure she’s apocalyptic.(So it makes sense, then, that she’s exactly Toni’s type.)





	baby (i'm yours)

**Author's Note:**

> this is the choni greaser au that absolutely nobody asked for but you all know that you wanted, okay, don't even kid yourselves about it.
> 
> aka last night's episode was actually when i was born.

**i.**

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that any Good Girl _must_ be in want of an equally Good Boy, one to keep her on the straight and narrow.

Toni Topaz has never been much of a Good Girl.

(And _oh_ , she thinks, _thank fuck for that_.)

Leather jackets suit her much better than blouses and poodle skirts, and she’s never seen much point in pinning each strand of hair behind her ear with one, two, three barrettes perfectly in a row, struggling to keep her unruly masses of curls in place. Her lipstick is too bright and it smudges up at the corners no matter how hard she tries to keep it between the lines - a metaphor, perhaps, or maybe she’s just way too lazy to try and keep it in check. The latter is probably more accurate, but the former seems much more fun.

She doesn’t _e-nun-ci-ate_ each word with careful precision and she’d rather split a due backs with Sweet Pea under the bleachers than dance around on the football field with all of Riverdale High’s little paper shakers. They've only been there a handful of weeks so the school’s hallways are still unfamiliar but that’s okay, Toni thinks, that suits her just fine. If nothing else, she’s adaptable.

The teachers call her _’Young Lady’_ and she tells them she’s not a fucking lady, she’s a _Serpent_ , and she’s going to make god damn sure everyone in the school knows it.

...

**ii.**

Here’s the thing: Toni’s seen first hand the kind of damage that a pretty girl and her smooth, creamy legs can do.

Betty Cooper’s not entirely awful, objectively speaking. The first time she meets Jughead she thinks _Yeah, this guy can keep up_ , and then just as quick she watches his face flash from awe to wonder to something she’s embarrassed to even _witness_ , all over a giggling bit of blonde curls and pleated skirt blowing a kiss at him from across the hall.

(“She turns you into a fucking nosebleed, Jones.”

“Betts is different,” he’d assured her, Serpent jacket resting comfortably across his shoulders - he’d looked so fucking at home in it the moment he first put it on that the jealousy that twisted Toni’s gut at the sight had almost knocked her out cold. “She’s different, Toni. Give her a chance.” 

She’d scoffed, almost aggressively disbelieving. “She’s the human version of a beige cardigan.”

“Give her a _chance_ , Topaz.”

By rule, Toni doesn’t give preps chances. But she remembered the look on Jughead’s face when he’d seen her in the hall that day and thought - _fuck it_. She’s a greaser, isn’t she? A rebel. 

What’s more rebellious than breaking the rules she’d made herself?)

So yeah, Betty’s not _awful_ , but she’s sweet and pretty and she turns Jughead into a bike ten months due for an oil change; she gums up the works. It’s not like Toni can blame him, really. It just makes her more grateful for her God-given gift of defying convention: people around her couple up and she stays comfortably, happily, blissfully, _alone_. It's the way that it should be.

She doesn't want to change it. She's never met anybody who's made her _want_ to want to change it, and that suits her just fine.

That is, of course, until Cheryl Blossom comes back to town.

...

**iii.**

She’s sitting at a gum-covered (not her work), marked up (definitely her work) desk in the second to back row, right hand side, when someone she's never seen before (someone she'd certainly remember) comes storming into class five minutes before the bell.

The room goes silent.

Then - _chaos_.

Sweet little Betty Cooper looks like she wants to vomit. Jughead rolls his eyes so hard that Toni feels tempted to ask him what the back of his head looks like, but she’s too distracted by the way that Cinnamon (Pepper? The bit of skirt isn’t important enough to remember) is practically flinging herself to grovel at the newcomer’s feet.

A glance up, and Toni can see why.

She’s… _something_. A mass of red hair that looks like it took hours to immaculately curl, brush, pin, and underneath it a girl that she’s almost positive was designed in one of those Soviet labs to look as intimidating as humanly possible. Her crisp, white blouse is tucked neatly into a houndstooth skirt and buttoned up all the way to the neckline and her outfit is utterly pristine and yet somehow feels entirely _dirty_.

Or maybe it’s just the smirk that’s panting the girl’s lips (bright fucking red, which is _not_ the colour that Good Girls wear, but Toni’s certainly not going to be caught complaining any time soon) that’s making her think twice about who she’s dealing with. The girl’s got the aura of a queen and the reputation of one too, if her classmate’s reactions to her arrival are anything to go off of, but there’s pure venom in her eyes and Toni thinks to herself - _yes_.

She’s been waiting for Riverdale High to get interesting. She just didn’t let herself hope it’d happen so soon.

“Cheryl!” Pepper (Cinnamon?) practically _squeaks_ , the poor little pom-pom girl looking so excited she might faint, “Oh my gosh, you just _have_ to tell us all about France! Was it just unreal? Did you just want to stay there forever?” 

The girl - _Cheryl_ , Toni assumes - lets her eyes flicker around the classroom, and her gaze falters when it drifts towards the Serpents in the corner, freezes when it lands on Toni herself. _Interesting_.

“Close your jaw, Ginger.” _Ginger_. Toni knew she was close. “The desperation on your breath is giving me a headache.”

Toni can’t help it - she scoffs.

Cheryl’s gaze (still on her face, it never left) narrows. She takes a step forward, and another, heels of her shiny black Mary Jane’s clicking on the tile as she approaches, and the sound is almost intoxicating.

Apparently Toni's caught her attention. _Good_.

She stops two feet away from Toni’s desk, and now that she’s closer the look in her eyes is easier to identify. She’s _calculating_ , working out an equation in her head that she doesn’t quite know how to solve. Toni doesn’t have a lot of money, but if she did she’d place it all on the guess that the problem in question is herself.

“You’re in my seat,” she says, and Toni knows what this is. It’s the other girl trying to show her authority, to make sure she knows her place.

So she replies, “You sure? ‘Cause my lap’s wide open, Kitten.”

For the second time in a matter of minutes, the room goes silent.

Almost. Ginger gasps, like something from a movie, but it’s not loud enough to distract Toni from Cheryl’s face.

She’s _grinning_.

“Tempting,” she says, so quiet Toni thinks she could have imagined it. 

And that’s...it. If the crowd was expecting a fight, a snarky comeback, they don’t get it - they just part like the Red Sea to allow Cheryl back to the front of the room and the girl doesn’t glance back, not once, but there’s a stiffness to her spine that Toni’s sure even Ginger isn’t stupid enough to miss.

Jughead says something like “She’s a nightmare,” from beside her and Betty looks almost devastatingly apologetic but Toni doesn’t pay them any mind. Instead she points her hand in the red head's direction, two fingers forward, thumb up, two fingers curled in. An approximation of a gun, and she fires it off with a snap of her wrist in the direction of pretty, perfect Cheryl’s head.

Girls like Cheryl, she thinks - they can do damage. 

_Girls like Cheryl_. There’s an inherent wrongness to the thought that Toni senses almost immediately. Girls like Cheryl don’t exist. There’s just _Cheryl_ , and Toni’s pretty sure she’s apocalyptic. 

So it makes sense, then, that she’s exactly Toni’s type.

...

**iv.**

They don’t see eachother often. English is their only class together and Cheryl always sits up at the front with an adoring flock of minions creating a three-foot human barrier in front of her, one that Toni couldn’t break through if she tried.

And that’s fine, really, because she’s not going to bend the girl over her desk in the middle of their classroom - or she _would_ , but she’s not going to do it with a crowd of preps surrounding them.

She doesn’t miss the irony, really, that she’d mocked Jughead for his obsession with his human Barbie doll of a girlfriend and then found herself wrapped firmly around the finger of Queenie herself. She’s just too stubborn to acknowledge it. For the most part, save a few snarky comments, Jughead regards her with his typical contemplative silence and Fangs attempts to tease her for it _once_ and earns himself a pounding; he doesn’t try again.

They still smoke under the bleachers at lunch and one day Cheryl flounces by with a flock of her minions giggling - the wind carries the sound like a fucking chime but there’s still that venom hidden not-quite under the surface; the sound is _intoxicating_. Reggie Mantle practically trips over Andrews on the football field as he watches the girls go by and the rest of the Serpents nearly kill themselves laughing at the lug, but Toni’s attention is still firmly fixed on Blossom as she all but floats away.

She still doesn’t turn around. _Vixen_.

(One day at lunch Jughead breaks his stoic exterior to tease her for letting _’Cheryl gum up the works’_ in the same way she'd mocked him for feeling about Betty, and as angry as she wants to be Toni knows that he isn’t wrong - for the past few days she hasn’t been able to think about anything but red hair and cheerleading uniforms and bright, cherry lips that are just begging to be bit, and it’s driving her up the fucking wall.

If this is the kind of damage Cheryl Blossom can do without even lifting a finger, well, Toni can’t wait to see what else she’s got in store.

What can she say? She’s always been a sucker for danger.)

So her first opportunity doesn’t come for a while, but one day she she walks by the library and there she is, _alone_ , and this is one chance she isn’t going to pass up.

The girl is perusing the shelves with an almost admirable kind of intensity, apparently looking for something in particular, and she’s so focused on her quest that she doesn't even seem to notice Toni slip in behind her. _Good_. She always likes to have an element of surprise.

“Anything I can help you find, Kitten?”

If Cheryl is taken aback by her sudden presence, she doesn’t let it show. “I’m not looking for any books on how to dress like a hobo, so no thank you.”

Toni can’t help it - she _laughs_. This girl…she’s something, no doubt about that.

“You think that’s my only area of expertise?” 

“No,” Cheryl said, voice dripping with sarcasm and amusement too, perhaps, somewhere buried underneath. “That’d require me to think about you at all.”

“Aw, ain’t that a bite?” Toni leans forward, resting her hand on the shelf behind Cheryl’s head so she can get a better look into the girl’s eyes. She seems scared, or excited, or _both_ \- perhaps somewhere in between, but she’s not running yet and that seems like a victory. “I sure think about you.” 

“Am I meant to be flattered?”

“You’re meant to be whatever you like, Kitten.”

She watches the path of Cheryl’s eyes as they trace her face (eyes, lips, forehead, lips, eyes, _lips_ ) and grins; the girl’s right where Toni wants her. She just doesn’t know it yet.

“What do you want from me?” The question sounds almost...vulnerable. Toni figures the least she can do is answer in kind.

“Nothing,” she says. “I just want you.”

They’re quiet for a moment, quiet enough that Toni takes a second to notice their breathing has synced up. Their chests are rising and falling at the same time and she can feel Cheryl’s breath against her cheek, _warm_ , and she wants to lean in and taste it.

“And I,” Cheryl says, after what can’t be more than a beat but feels like forever, “want you to get your sapphic, Serpent hands _off_ of me.”

Toni steps back, unphased, and raises her hands beside her head. “Wasn’t touching you, darling,” she says, and then adds, “Wish I had been.”

This time when she leaves, it’s different. 

Different because she feels Cheryl’s eyes on her when she leaves, unwavering, and Toni’s the one who doesn’t glance back. Not even for a half of a second - she doesn’t need to to know that the cheerleader is watching her the whole fucking way.

... 

**v.**

Toni’s at the drive-in with Fangs (who’s ditched her for Keller, surprisingly enough) when she sees a familiar flash of red hair heading towards the concession and thinks - fuck it.

She’s seen _Roman Holiday_ more than enough times anyways; she doesn’t mind missing a scene or six.

Not that she’d ever admit as much out loud.

She tries to think of something witty to say, but the other girl’s all dressed up in red and black and the sight is so distracting that her mind goes blank for a second, and then a handful more, and by the time she’s close enough the only think she can think to manage is “ _Wow._ ”

Cheryl whips around, looking confused, and Toni can’t blame her. That was far from a strong entrance.

“I _thought_ I smelled cheap leather and desperation. Have you come to get rejected again?”

Has she? _Probably_ , but at least Toni isn’t going to make things easy on her. “Sorry to disappoint,” she reaches behind the other girl’s back to the snacks, grabbing a pack of Twizzlers and placing them on the counter with her change, “but I’m craving something a bit sweeter.”

“You don’t think I’m sweet?” Cheryl says, and she almost sounds offended. _Interesting_.

“I think you’re _something_.” It’s as close to the truth as she’s willing to offer. “Funny, I always thought of you as more of a Monroe fan.”

Cheryl scoffs, focusing her attention on the snack tray in front of her. “And I took you for a James Dean kind of girl.” 

“Who’s to say a girl can’t be both?” she replies, and Cheryl shoots back, “ _Exactly,_ ”, and the silence between them is loaded with something even Toni can’t identify. Something different.

“Who’s the lucky sweetheart tonight then, darlin’?”

“No one,” Cheryl says, and for a moment Toni thinks she’s heard her wrong. “I came alone.”

“Now, that’s not right.” 

“It’s nothing,” her tone is haughty, defensive, and Toni wants to kiss the determined line of her mouth. 

_Wants_ to, but can’t. The game’s not even half-way up and she doesn’t think Cheryl Blossom’s going to be as easy as a back seat necking during a late-night screening of an Audrey Hepburn film. That doesn’t seem quite her style, and it isn’t really Toni’s either.

“See, but it’s _not_ nothing, because technically I’m here alone too.”

“Is that supposed to be an offer?”

Cheryl doesn’t look half as exasperated as she sounds. She looks _intrigued_.

“It is if you want it to be one. And I promise,” Toni holds her hands up high before slipping them into her jacket pockets, grinning, “I’ll even keep my sapphic, Serpent hands to myself.”

That’s when it happens. _It_. Laughter cuts through the night like a bell, and it’s the sweetest fucking sound Toni thinks she’s ever heard. This isn’t Cheryl’s fake, poisonous giggle, the one that she spits out when she’s surrounded by her little flock of pom-pom birds - this is something different, and beautiful, and Toni’s pretty sure she wants to hear it every single day for the rest of her god damn life.

“I don’t know what you’re doing to me, darlin’.” She says, honest, _raw_ , and the words only sound half as awed as she feels.

“Something good, I hope.”

Toni meets her eyes - clear as any river she’s ever seen and full of even more secrets, secrets like the little flecks of gold she’s never noticed before and the way they hold her gaze without even wavering, pupils dilated wide and open and she _sees_ \- 

“Something sensational,” she replies, and Cheryl’s answering smile is as bright as the sun.

(She looks in her eyes and she sees the entire fucking universe, and it’s not as scary as she thought it would be.)

...

**vi.**

Later that night they’re parked outside Cheryl’s house, Toni having ditched her bike at the drive-in to accompany the other girl home (she wasn’t stupid enough to pass _that_ offer up), and the silence between them isn’t as uncomfortable as she thought it might be.

Cheryl’d let her drive, albeit begrudgingly, and the whole ride home their hands had rested just a hair’s breath apart by the gearshift - they haven’t moved since they parked, and Toni can’t stop thinking about how easy it would be do run her pinky finger down the pretty, soft skin of the back of the other girl’s hand. The thought is practically fucking hypnotic.

But she can tell from the downward curl of Cheryl’s lip that there’s something else happening here, something she’s not about to step on.

Toni’s smart enough to know her one shot when she sees it.

“I’m not a devient,” Cheryl says, cutting through the quiet of the night with barely a whisper.

“I never would've thought you were,” she says, and she means it.

“Other people do. That’s why they all hang around me, you know. Because they’re scared of me.” Now that’s not exactly news to Toni, but what _is_ is the sadness in Cheryl’s voice when she says it. “They think I’m something vicious.”

“Thought you wanted to be something vicious.” The statement isn’t intended to make her feel worse. It’s gentle, probing, and from the look on Cheryl’s face it isn’t taken as anything but.

“I do. But I want to be something soft, too.”

Cheryl bites her lower lip. Not for the first time, Toni thinks about kissing it.

(Later. The air is shifting between them and Toni knows that _this_ is more important than any kiss could ever be.)

“Sweetheart,” she says, and the word isn’t just an endearment - it's something real. “You can be something soft with me.”

“I don’t know you.”

Funny, Toni thinks, how someone so clever could be so totally blind.

“I _want_ you to know me. I want to know you.”

“And if you don’t like me?”

She sighs, more disbelieving than annoyed. “Think we’re well beyond that stage, Kitten.” 

Toni can see it - the ghost of a smile dancing across Cheryl’s lips, and she thinks she’ll do anything to bring it back to life. “And if I don’t like you?”

They lock eyes once again, and the feeling’s just as powerful as it was the first time. Toni thinks about that day in the classroom, about how she hadn’t been able to stop staring at Cheryl Blossom then and she hasn’t been able to stop staring at Cheryl Blossom since, and she thinks to herself that even just to be disliked by this beautiful, dazzling enigma of a girl would be something of a privilege.

“For you? That seems like a risk I can handle taking.”

Cheryl shakes her head, and the expression that takes over her face seems half-pleased, half-disbelieving. “I don’t understand a thing about you.” 

“Lucky for you,” Toni says, “you’ve got plenty of time to figure it o-”

It take a moment for her brain to process what’s happening.

And then - _oh_.

Because Cheryl Blossom is kissing her and she doesn’t taste like cherries and dark chocolate like Toni had always thought she might - she tastes like vanilla and starlight and every sweet, bright thing in the world, and Toni’s never felt anything like this before but she’s pretty sure her blood is _singing_.

There’s a mental list of things in her mind that she wants to do (she wants to crawl inside Cheryl’s heart and make a home there and never, _ever_ leave, she wants to wrap herself up in the girl’s lap and pull her closer than two human beings have ever been, she wants, wants, _wants_ ) but the only thing she’s certain of is that she wants to do this every day, every second, for the rest of forever.

“You can drive me to school tomorrow,” Cheryl says against her lips, the words just as ridiculous as she is. “I’ve always wanted to ride on the back of a bike.”

“Anything, darlin’,” Toni tells her, delighted and amused and entirely smitten, “ _Anything._ ”

She’s never been very good at promises but _fuck_ , she thinks, is she going to make this one stick.

(And here’s the thing: Toni’s seen first hand the kind of damage that a pretty girl and her smooth, creamy legs can do.

But Cheryl?

If anything, she thinks, Cheryl might just be the one to put her back together.)

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos are always appreciated xx


End file.
